The referee tossed the coin high, dropped it, covered it, and signaled the players on both sides to guess heads and tails.
In the end Wang Chao got the right to serve.
It was just such a simple opening, but it still caused the commentators in the local Swedish sports broadcast room to cry like crazy, and their faces were red with excitement.
This is because Wang Chao is actually very popular in European forums. Even though Huaping has not made a clear stance, Europe has already recognized that Wang Chao must be the future Grand Slam candidate and is the key training target of Huaping.
In this case, Europeans began to study Wang Chao crazily.
Especially after Wang Chao played an unprecedented purely technical duel with Sun Tianlong on Super League, the Europeans went crazy studying him.
They discovered the rule of Wang Chao's coin guessing: when encountering a weaker opponent, Wang Chao will not get the right to serve. And when encountering a super strong opponent, Wang Chao will definitely get the right to serve.
This law is like some kind of compensation. It wants to give the weak more capital to struggle and the strong to have some small constraints.
This law is very effective, just like another Asian Evil Arts. The Europeans gave it a name, Wang Chao's Balance Magic.
In today's game, everyone originally recognized Michel as the weak one and he should have succeeded in guessing the money. However, due to the arrival of Old Wa, the balance of victory in the minds of the fans began to tilt and became difficult to predict.
At this moment, Wang Chao actually got the right to serve. Doesn't that mean that Wang Chao has been destined to be the weakling in this game by the god who secretly controls the outcome of the table?
Swedish fans are very optimistic because of this, but of course, let's not break out the champagne just because the swelling in the face from the previous few months has not gone away.
Amidst such an uproar, the game officially began.
Wang Chao serves.
He chose a very conventional short backspin and served it to the forehand position of Michel.
"Okay, Wang Chao, a player from Huaping, chose to serve K a short forehand ball. Did he think of the game two months ago? But did he ever think that it was precisely because of that defeat that K learned the lesson and chose to make technical changes, and now, his forehand is no longer the forehand it used to be!"
The speaker was a commentator from Sweden's official sports channel. As a professional commentator from a veteran table tennis powerhouse, his professional ability was naturally not comparable to that of someone like Tavares. His words were completely to the point.
But the most commendable thing is not his ability to understand, but his speaking speed.
You must know that the pace of table tennis is very fast. Even if the short backspin serve is slightly slower, from touching the ball to passing the net to bouncing to the opponent's racket to touch the ball, it actually only takes one or two seconds at best. Considering that the commentator predicted Wang Chao's serve and then reacted when Wang Chao first made the serving posture, then the whole process can be counted as two and a half seconds.
In these two and a half seconds, he managed to finish the above-mentioned long paragraph.
What he said is actually quite right.
Two months ago, Wang Chao and Michel played against each other for the first time, and they also used a short backspin on the forehand position, because at that time he knew exactly that Michel's forehand control was average, and his attack power was far inferior to his backhand. Therefore, just by controlling Michel's forehand, he could not use all his strength.
Wang Chao won very easily that day, because Michel was completely hit by seven inches, and there was no way to fight back. He was like a hairy crab with strong claws and a show of force. Wang Chao, who was not as strong as him, wrapped him up with straw ropes in circles, getting tighter and denser, and finally lost his offensive ability completely.
Today Wang Chao repeated his old tricks, but Michel is no longer Wu Xia Amon.
He swings short.
Wang Chao swings back.
Michel again.
Wang Chao swings back again.
In the blink of an eye, the two sides fought for four consecutive rounds of short balls on the table, and Michel never showed any flaws.
Of course, compared to the peak battle between Luo Jiu and Sun Tianlong, this scene is not worth mentioning, but if you compare it with the scene two months ago, you will know what this means to Michel.
This means that Wang Chao can no longer easily gain the initiative to attack from the short ball in the forehand position.
The non-rotating plastic and two months of hard technical modifications have allowed Michel to make great improvements in its weakest link.
But it's not enough.
If you want to defeat Wang Chao, it is useless just to fight for a few more rounds. This only means a stalemate, not a break. And if the stalemate continues, Michel still cannot beat Wang Chao.
After all, Wang Chao's technical stability has been recognized around the world, and he even clearly won the duel with Bayer and Mizutori Hato.
Apart from Sun Tianlong and Luo Jiu, the five people with the best hands on the planet, Wang Chao has proven with actual actions that he can at least rank third.
So Michel chose to attack without hesitation in the fifth round.
His attack is different from other players' forehands. Others pull it, but he hits it hard.
The characteristic of pulling the ball is that when the height of the ball is lower than the net, I can spin the ball to arc and force it over the net.
The hard racket must be activated when the height of the ball is higher than the net, allowing the ball to fly straight across the net to somewhere on the opponent's table.
At first glance, it seems that the hard shot is extremely restrictive and the technical content is far inferior to that of pulling the ball.
But this is not the case.
You must know that every return ball from both sides of the game must pass over the net. Crossing the net means that the height of the ball when it bounces on the table for the first time must be higher than the net. So when the ball takes off for the second time, although it will lose part of its kinetic energy, resulting in a reduction in height, this reduction is actually very small.
Theoretically speaking, for more than 90% of short backspin, the highest point of its second bounce is higher than the net, but not much higher.
At the same time, this spot is very difficult to find and fleeting.
And don't forget, the ball is still spinning at its highest point.
No matter how weak this spin is, it will definitely cause a slight deviation between the angle at which the ball flies out and the angle at which your racket shoots it. After all, you are not counteracting this spin at all.
Therefore, when players hit the ball hard, they must also consider the error caused by this rotation, and use the angle of the racket to try to offset this error.
In fact, the requirements for hand feel and accuracy are no less than those required for pulling the ball on the table.
The 1.9 meter Michel leaned forward at this time, his upper body almost reached the net, and he swatted the ball that just flew over.
He has a unique advantage when it comes to hard hitting, because he is too tall, which allows him to get closer to observe the ball when leaning forward, which can also greatly reduce the difficulty of hitting the ball.
This ball is very, very fast.
Under the same power, a ball without spin is faster than a ball with spin, and Michel's physical strength can definitely rank among the top five, or even the top three, among European players.
So strictly speaking, this shot is even a few minutes faster than Lin Zijun's signature backhand speed twist when he was in the best condition.
Michel roared while hitting the ball.
This is an emotional outlet.
Facing Wang Chao, who had easily blocked him, Michel held his breath.
The arrival of Old Wa gave his already somewhat heavy heart a super shot of cardiotonic.
He was full of fighting spirit and ambitious at the moment. He just felt that the significance of today's battle in his mind was no less than the impact of successive European players in the past few years Sun Tianlong.
If you can't slay the dragon and achieve enlightenment, then slay Chao to prove the way will be the same.
This is the first ball in the first game. Strictly speaking, this shot is not a regular attack, but a fighting ball.
After all, the height of the ball was too high, so Michel also struggled to shoot it. After shooting it, he didn't know whether it would be successful. If he had to estimate a success rate, he thought it would never exceed 30%.
But the ball really hit the mark. The ball landed on the Wang Chao forehand table and instantly turned into a bolt of lightning, trying to pass under Wang Chao's ribs.
No one thought the ball could be caught, including He Jingping sitting behind the baffle.
Judging from his more than ten years of on-site coaching experience, this kind of ball is a typical Unreasonable Shot.
Either it won't make it to the stage, or if it does, there will be no reason to argue.
But Wang Chao caught the ball...
Yes, very magical.
Michel's initial movement range when shooting the ball was actually very large, but at that moment Wang Chao did not choose to leave the stage early. He was still in front of the stage. When Michel was shooting the ball, he did not think about pulling or stepping back at all. Instead, he sent the racket directly to his side like a conditioned reflex, twisted his wrist slightly, and adjusted the angle of the racket surface.
Michel's action of hitting the ball and his action of sending the racket to his side are almost completed simultaneously. It is difficult to distinguish the sequence.
It seemed like a coincidence. The ball was ridiculously fast. Wang Chao didn't make any other moves after completing this simple action. In fact, he really couldn't react. However, the ball bounced up by chance and hit Wang Chao's racket. Because the inclination of the racket was very suitable, it bounced back at a faster speed and landed on the table next to Michel.
Michel didn't react at all and let the ball miss.
1:0, Wang Chao scored.
There was an unusual silence in the audience, because the Swedish fans originally wanted to cheer for Michel, but suddenly found that Michel had lost points, and they couldn't adjust their emotions for a while.
It wasn't until a second or two later that messy exclamations of admiration and disbelieving exclamations rang out from all around.
The director's camera zoomed in on Wang Chao's face, giving a super close-up. The audience discovered that at this moment, Wang Chao was not happy after winning, but instead frowned slightly, as if thinking about something.
Wang Chao serves again, still with short backspin.
Michel still had a short fight with Wang Chao, but after four rounds of fighting, he chose to skim the ball to the bottom line in the center of the Wang Chao table.
He didn't dare to fight anymore. He felt that his control was weakening. If he fought for one or two more rounds, he would most likely have to return the ball and take the advantage.
Facing this long ball from the baseline, Wang Chao was not in a hurry to attack. He took half a step back steadily, rubbed the ball back flatly, and still landed near the table.
Michel had no choice but to send the ball to Wang Chao's bottom line of the table again.
But in this continuous fine control of the small ball in the table, he finally showed a flaw. This time he failed to send it to the center of the table, but sent it to the baseline of the backhand position, and it was slightly high.
Wang Chao didn't hesitate at all, took half a step back from the stage, and made a strong counter-pull like Pike.
Michel's choice was to quickly retreat from the stage, and move his body to the right, and also came up with a powerful reverse pull forward loop ball.
In fact, he is not afraid of this kind of ball.
Among the top professional players in Europe, he belongs to the category who are not too afraid of Pike.
Because his backhand pull is also his signature. Although his skills in spin and line changing are not very good, his strength is sufficient. No matter how the opponent spins, as long as I roughly touch it without being too accurate, I can use my unparalleled brute force to forcefully break the spin on the ball, and simply and crudely let the ball spin back to me in the direction I specified, and fly back again.
This is the most typical use of force over skill.
When Wang Chao learns from Pike, he mainly learns skills, that is, weird arcs and strange rotation angles. As for power, he is actually not as good as Pike. So this ball becomes an opportunity for Michel, allowing him to pull Wang Chao into the vortex of the stalemate in the middle.
This is his comfort zone.
The ball he pulled was heavy and spun. As expected, Wang Chao was forced to retreat and switched to a forehand pull with a heavy loop.
Michel still pulled back steadily.
Every time he pulls the ball, he explodes with all his strength, and he pulls forward in a arc, never letting any board become a transition without quality.
Wang Chao pulled the forehand again, but this time he changed the line and hit the ball to the Michel forehand position.
At this moment, Old Wa, who was sitting behind the baffle, smiled slightly.
Everyone knows that Michel's forehand is not as powerful as his backhand, but they forget that it was Michel two months ago.
The current Michel has a positive forehand with no spin, only speed, but when faced with a long ball in the middle, this does not affect his ability to exert force at all.
When a player can exert full force, no matter what, the forehand position must be more powerful than the backhand position. This is determined by the human body structure.
Michel came up with a long-distance hard shot, his arms were completely thrown away, his legs were spread out, like a horse stance, and his lower body was as stable as a mountain, so all the power was thrown out with the rotation of his waist and body.
This action is even a bit like spinning a top.
The spectators in the stands could not feel the pressure of the ball up close, but they could at least see how fast the ball was.
It was obviously such a long distance, but it seemed like the ball passed right by in the blink of an eye.
Many Swedish fans jumped out of their seats.
They like this kind of hard-bridged, hard-horsed, wide-open attack so much. It's like being overwhelmed by a mountain. They are just waiting for the ball to penetrate Wang Chao, and they want to cheer as much as they want.
However, at the same time that Michel touched the ball, Wang Chao did the same action as before.
As if he had a leap-frog reaction, he stretched out his arm like lightning and turned his racket sideways, as if he was waiting for something to happen.
The speed of the ball has exceeded the reaction speed of ordinary people. It just flashed, and a "pop" was heard in the ears, and it landed on the table. Then, it hit the racket with a "bang", and then it landed on the opposite table with a "pop".
The three sounds almost became one, which shows how fast the ball flew at that moment.
But when the dust settled, everyone looked around and saw that the ball was still on the ground on Michel's side.
The referee blew the whistle and turned the scoreboard in front of him expressionlessly, reaching the position of 2:0. Wang Chao continued to lead.
The director immediately pulled the camera to Wang Chao's face again and found that Wang Chao's expression was the same as before, still looking like he was thinking.
The director didn't understand why, so he could only quickly turn the camera to He Jingping, trying to get some clues from Wang Chao's teacher.
As a result, he found that He Jingping was also frowning, with the same expression as Wang Chao.
(Why do I feel deeply guilty even though two updates are more than 7k? I thought about it for a long time and figured it out. It's probably because I have to update three times tomorrow. After all, if I can't update three times, why is it called San Jiang Ge?)